Free Republic

There is an old saying, "A man who is capable of deceiving only others is not nearly as dangerous as a man who is capable of deceiving himself." Truer words were never spoken. When a person lies, he is deceiving others about reality, but at least knows he is engaging in deception. But when someone rationalizes — which is when you lie to yourself — he is truly lost. He then not only bends reality for others as a by-product of bending it for himself, but he can render untruths without having to lie. This is because a lie is...

Josef Stalin had a pet term for many of those he consigned to the Gulag for ten or twenty-year terms--wreckers. Individuals convicted of this particular crime were said to have committed industrial sabotage on a massive scale, which was then used as one of the reasons reason why a particular factory or industry failed to make their quota in a certain state plan.

Here's a useful rule of thumb about international conventions, U.N. documents and the findings of foreign courts: Any time an American judge cites one in an American court, something alarming is probably about to happen. The source of the alarm is usually that the judge has spotted some important "emerging world consensus" that requires him to defy the plain meaning of American law. One example glares out from the Supreme Court's decision prolonging racial preferences (Grutter v. Bollinger). In a concurring opinion, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer cited the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of...

The Anti-Hero By Richard A. Posner The New Republic February 24, 2003 Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas by Bruce Allen Murphy (Random House, 688 pp., $35) I met justice William Douglas, the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court, when I was clerking for Justice William Brennan. Douglas struck me as cold and brusque but charismatic--the most charismatic judge (well, the only charismatic judge) on the Court. Little did I know that this elderly gentleman (he was sixty-four when I was a law clerk) was having sex with his soon-to-be third wife in his Supreme Court...